While doing some research on Gloria Steinem, I
came across your website. Something has been bugging
me for some years now. I remember when the term
Ms. first became widely recognized in the late
60s and I recall that it was intended to replace
both Miss and Mrs. so that a woman's marital status
was not indicated as has always been the case for
men.

However, even today some 40 years on, I notice
that on most forms that require you to check a
form of address, I see Mr., Mrs., Miss and Ms.
This is totally against the original intent of
the use of Ms. I usually cross out the Miss and
Mrs. I have written letters to the editors of several
papers and I rant about this practice whenever
I can.

What else can I do??? Can your organization
launch or help to launch a huge public service
campaign to educate the general populace about
how to use proper forms of address? And don't fall
for that argument that courtesy requires us to
allow a woman to be addressed as Miss or Mrs. if
she prefers. That is nonsense. Language changes.
Once and for all, it is Mr. for a male and Ms.
for a female. Thank you.

Thanks
for reaching out to feminist.com and you make
such a great point...and I have my own frustrations
with medical forms, which ask "married" or "single" and
I ask why not: "married" or "not
married" — and your frustration seems
to point to the same thing. With Ms., we get
the same information as we do with Mr. (i.e.,
gender) — but by listing those other things
for women we are essentially asking "Married,
Single or Undecided" whereas with men, we
don't get any of that. I would start with a few
places and point this out to them and simply
ask them to narrow the choice.

And even more...I
might ask that they remove it all together. For
instance, when I have the option of that, I never
check it — as I feel it's pointless information,
it's a formality that is only superficially enforced — only
on wedding invitations and holiday cards to people
actually list that information and thus it's
time for us to stop "requiring" it.
I will do what I can, too —but I think
start small and see if the example catches on.